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By early January 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused >6.7 million deaths worldwide (1), and severe socioeconomic hardship (2-4), particularly for racial minorities (5,6). Children experienced pandemic-related school closures that [...]

Manduca sexta, known as the tobacco hornworm or Carolina sphinx moth, is a lepidopteran insect that is used extensively as a model system for research in insect biochemistry, physiology, neurobiology, development, and immunity. One important benefit of this species as an experimental model is its extremely large size, reaching more than 10 g in the larval stage. M. sexta larvae feed on solanaceous plants and thus must tolerate a substantial challenge from plant allelochemicals, including nicotine. We report the sequence and annotation of the M. sexta genome, and a survey of gene expression in various tissues and developmental stages. The Msex_1.0 genome assembly resulted in a total genome size of 419.4 Mbp. Repetitive sequences accounted for 25.8% of the assembled genome. The official gene set is comprised of 15,451 protein-coding genes, of which 2498 were manually curated. Extensive RNA-seq data from many tissues and developmental stages were used to improve gene models and for insights into gene expression patterns. Genome wide synteny analysis indicated a high level of macrosynteny in the Lepidoptera. Annotation and analyses were carried out for gene families involved in a wide spectrum of biological processes, including apoptosis, vacuole sorting, growth and development, structures of exoskeleton, egg shells, and muscle, vision, chemosensation, ion channels, signal transduction, neuropeptide signaling, neurotransmitter synthesis and transport, nicotine tolerance, lipid metabolism, and immunity. This genome sequence, annotation, and analysis provide an important new resource from a well-studied model insect species and will facilitate further biochemical and mechanistic experimental studies of many biological systems in insects.

Midazolam, a potent anxiolytic drug with sedative properties, is susceptible to degradation by both light and hydrolysis in aqueous solution. When formulated as an intranasal product it was found to be effective in achieving seizure control in epileptic patients. In order to deliver an adequate therapeutic dose to a patient, a nasal formulation requires the concentration of midazolam to be higher than its’ aqueous solubility. One way to increase midazolam solubility to a therapeutic concentration, is complexation with randomly methylated-β-cyclodextrin. Thus, it is important to determine how complexation with cyclodextrin affects the rate of degradation and type of midazolam degradants that are formed. We have found that complexation with cyclodextrin decreases its photostability. More importantly, the degradation profile for midazolam is significantly altered when it is complexed with randomly methylated-β-cyclodextrin, what we partly confirmed in our previous work.1 By continuing our study we have found that degradation products, not observed on the photodegradation of uncomplexed midazolam are observed in significant quantities when it is complexed with randomly methylated-β-cyclodextrin. The decreased photostability was accompanied by the appearance of two new degradation products, an intermediate structure and a dimer. Photoproduct formation followed the same pattern as in the forced degradation studies, further confirming the presence of an intermediate. The production of these new photodegradants, characterized with their MS spectra, as well as proposed degradation mechanism of midazolam is discussed.

Diligent preparation and effective countermeasures are critical to mitigating future influenza pandemics. The 1918 influenza pandemic, the most severe in recent history, resulted in [approximately equal to] 50 million deaths [...]

Abstract. We consider two types of convex approximations of two-stage totally unimodular integer recourse models. Although worst-case error bounds are available for these approximations, their actual performance has not yet [...]

Oil and gas companies are drilling and developing fields in the Arctic Ocean, which is an environment with ice floes. These companies must protect their platforms from ice floe collisions. [...]

The infrastructure of the United States, and the world, is increasingly interconnected. The ongoing integration of systems--including transportation, energy, water, communications, finance and more--has been central to their growth in [...]

The methods for authoring and distributing course content are undergoing substantial changes due to advancement in computer technology. Paper has been the traditional method to author and distribute course content. Paper enables students to personalize content through highlighting and note taking but does not enable the incorporation of multimedia elements. Computers enable multimedia content but lack the capability of the user to personalize the content. Therefore, we investigated TK3 eBooks as a potential solution to incorporate the benefits of both paper and computer technology. The objective of our study was to assess the utility of TK3 eBooks in the context of authoring and distributing dermatology course content for use by second-year medical students at the University of Utah School of Medicine during the spring of 2004. We incorporated all dermatology course content into TK3 eBook format. TK3 eBooks enable students to personalize information through tools such as "notebook," "hiliter," "stickies," mark pages, and keyword search. Students were given the course content in both paper and eBook formats. At the conclusion of the dermatology course, students completed a questionnaire designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the eBooks compared with paper. Students perceived eBooks as an effective way to distribute course content and as a study tool. However, students preferred paper over eBooks to take notes during lecture. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that eBooks provide a convenient method for authoring, distributing, and using course content but that students preferred paper to take notes during lecture.

Influenza pandemics occur when novel strains of the influenza virus emerge in human populations and spread worldwide (1). There were 3 influenza pandemics in the 20th century (1918, 1957, and [...]

We consider a multiperiod system operation problem with two conflicting objectives, minimizing cost and risk. Risk sterns from uncertain disruptions to the system during operation. Whereas a general model would [...]

The construction industry in the United States and other parts of the world has been facing several challenges, including a shortage of skilled workers. A review of the relevant body of knowledge indicates that one of the key reasons for this problem is the absence of human resource management strategies for construction workers at project, corporate, regional, or industry levels. This paper addresses the issues of workforce training and allocation on construction projects. It presents a framework to optimize the investment in, and to make the best use of, the available workforce with the intent to reduce project costs and improve schedule performance. A linear program model, entitled the Optimal Workforce investment Model, is built to provide an optimization-based framework for matching supply and demand of construction labor most efficiently through training, recruitment, and allocation. Given a project schedule or demand profile and the available pool of workers, the suggested model provides human resource managers a combined strategy for training the available workers and hiring additional workers. The input data to the proposed model consists of a certain available labor pool, cost figures for training workers in different skills, the cost of hiring workers, hourly labor wages, and estimates of affinities between the different considered skills. The objective of the model is to minimize labor costs while satisfying project labor demands. Results from application of the model to typical situations are presented, and recommendations for future developments are made. CE Database subject headings: Construction industry: Optimization: Training; Employees; Computer programming.